Posts

The U.S. is in the midst of a salmonella outbreak that has so far sickened hundreds of people in at least 18 states. But state officials and scientists are hamstrung in their attempts to track it because of the government shutdown. Is there anything they can do except wait for Congress to get its act together? And what happens if things get worse?An Uncoordinated ResponseOn Monday, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) announced chicken produced at three Foster Farms plants in California has been linked to salmonella sickness....

MORE BRAND-NEW COVERAGE OF THE ZR1 TEST DRIVE* TEST DRIVE: 2009 Chevy Corvette ZR1 (With Behind-the Scenes Video!)* SPY REPORT: Experts Predict Tech Behind ZR1-Spanking New C7 CorvetteMILFORD, Mich. – When I was driving the new Corvette ZR1 recently, the most shocking aspect wasn’t actually the 638-hp supercharged V8. No, it’s the way Chevrolet manages to get all that power to the ground in a safe, controllable manner. The ZR1 is one of the fastest, most powerful cars in production....

The Right to Repair movement is getting a major opponent in the form of Apple, according to reports from Vice’s Motherboard. And while the battle over repairing phones may take the forefront, there’s much more at stake. “Right to Repair” is legislation would require Apple and other electronics manufacturers to sell repair parts to consumers and independent repair shops. On top of that, the laws would require manufacturers to make diagnostic and service manuals available to the public....

Media Platforms Design TeamCutting back shrubs and trees can be one of the toughest summer jobs, but it’s unavoidable—if you neglect it, your house will be overgrown in no time. So start with the easiest jobs first. —Roy Berendsohn___ Shear yews and boxwoods to shape. By far the easiest way to do this is with an electric or gas engine hedge trimmer. Remember, though, that if you use an electric trimmer, keep the cord well away from the saw....

Media Platforms Design TeamA week before the debut of the 2014 CTS at the New York International Auto Show, Cadillac showed off its newest engine: a twin-turbo V-6 that makes 420 hp and 430 lb-ft of torque. For those playing along at home, that’s the same hp as Audi’s 4.0-liter twin-turbo V-8 found in the S6 and S7, and 20 more than BMW’s 4.4-liter twin turbo V-8.The new engine, code name LF3, is based on the 3....

Media Platforms Design Team1785: A chain handsaw model appears in John Aitken’s . The fine serrated chain is used to remove diseased bone.Principles of Midwifery, or Puerperal Medicine1926: Andreas Stihl patents two-person saws: a 116-pound electric model, and a 139-pound gas one in 1929. U.S. troops bring them home from Europe in 1941 to be imitated.1945: Chain saws before the end of World War II are heavy, often wheeled, two-person devices....

Big data—and big processing power—is a big deal for science. By crunching massive amounts of data billions of times faster than could be done by hand, computers have allowed scientists to discover faraway planets, unravel our genetic code, and even find the subatomic particle responsible for gravity. But imagine a future in which computers don’t just use their awesome power to help scientists. Imagine a future in which computer can come up with useful scientific ideas and hypotheses all on their own....

Your car squeaks. It’s gotten to the point where the neighbors know you’re on the way home from half a block away because of all the “chirps” and “eeps” coming from your suspension. It’s embarrassing, man. It’s also potentially expensive if you have to replace all those worn parts. So why do these components begin to squeak? Suspension and steering joints wear out–and ultimately fail–when unlubricated metal-to-metal contact erodes bushings and bearing surfaces, much like 40-grit sandpaper on a wooden table....

Like any seasoned junkie, a racing game fan is accustomed to (1) waiting for his man and (2) disappointment. And if you’re a PlayStation 3-owning racing fan, you’re a particularly desperate sort, with a sluggish game development schedule that’s not likely to pick up speed anytime soon. Which is why Formula One Championship Edition has a shot at mainstream appeal.F-1 serves an extremely niche market in the U.S., and even the most forgiving simulation of this style of racing is still pretty hard to swallow for all but the most dedicated fans....

Media Platforms Design TeamAfter both likely and far-fetched rumors made their rounds on the web for weeks, CERN—the European Counsel for Nuclear Research that runs the largest particle accelerator in the world—finally announced its big Higgs boson news today. And it seems to be worth the wait. One of the most elusive scientific mysteries of the past century looks like it’s on its way to being solved. By analyzing trillions of proton-proton particle collisions from this year and last, researchers have found “strong indications for the presence of a new particle which could be the Higgs boson,” according to the CERN website and a press conference early this morning....

Battling Patio BulgeQ: We have a patio covered with modular concrete pavers that are being pushed up by a river birch that we planted nearby. The birch is about 12 in. in diameter and is about 6 to 7 ft. from the patio. Can we remove the part of the root that’s pushing up the pavers? And how do we then repair the patio?ERIC WICHERSKILINCOLN, NEA: Cut a tree root and you risk killing, or at least seriously harming, the tree....

Media Platforms Design TeamYour screens are already used by companies around the world, including CNN. Why redesign a successful product?The company had found a breakthrough technology and it served us well, but the problem was, the technology didn’t really scale well down to LCDs. The screens required a projector behind them a few feet deep. While it doesn’t really matter from a usability point of view, if you walk to the wall and look behind it, you’d see a pretty big setup....

Andy Ryan, a planetary geologist at Arizona State University, didn’t notice these enigmatic coils on the Martian surface at first. It wasn’t until he took a second, closer look at images of the Red Planet that the odd spirals came into focus. In a study published today, Ryan described the shapes as lava coils, spiral formations that show up on the surface of a lava flow and endure when it solidifies....

Media Platforms Design TeamSooner or later, every bathroom needs a tuneup, and the tub’s shower enclosure is often the best place to start. An enclosure is large enough to dominate the room and set the tone, yet it’s often the area most in need of repair. As always, the culprit is water. Tiled walls are especially vulnerable because every 4-in. tile has 16 in. of leak potential at its edges. When well installed and regularly maintained, tiled shower walls can last a generation or more....

Media Platforms Design TeamJennifer’s Body: Unrated (2009)Media Platforms Design TeamJennifer’s Body had a lot things working against it, especially considering the massive overexposure of and ensuing backlash against it’s marquee star Megan Fox as well as the truly pedestrian direction of “semi-prefessonal” filmmaker Karyn Kusama, but Amanda Seyfried and Diablo Cody’s script make it work. Cody, the Academy-Award-winning screenwriter of 2007’s Juno, doesn’t make Jennifer’s Body a horror film, but rather an ode to horror films....

Media Platforms Design TeamDialSpeed, Master Lock’s vision for the future of high school security, maintains the familiar shape of the company’s classic padlock: A dial with a U-shaped lock that comes free upon entering the correct combination. But gone are the days of opening it with a metal key or turning the dial to enter the series of numbers.DialSpeed is an electronic lock that replaces the wheel of numbers with a direction pad that allows you to push up, down, left, or right....

I’m a blogger, and I blog from wherever I am (even in the car, or in an airplane on the tarmac), which means I’m usually toting a laptop with Wi-Fi and EVDO. It’s a small laptop, but it seems big enough when I’ve carried it around all day. The $400 Nokia N800 just might be the answer. It’s small enough to fit in a vest pocket, or even a man’s shirt pocket....

The captain of the TransAsia plane that crashed shortly after takeoff in Taipei last February accidentally shut down the wrong engine—the only working one—when the second engine lost power, according to a transcript and initial report released in Taiwan. The report also revealed that he realized his mistake just seconds before the plane’s fatal dive into a river.While the initial report doesn’t pin blame directly on the pilot, the facts as laid out in the document leave little doubt that an inexplicable lapse in judgment contributed to the tragedy on Feb....

Media Platforms Design TeamThis prototype flashlight would be utterly unhelpful in a blackout or in the woods. But the plasma-emitting machine, shaped like a giant crayon, has one useful feature that your Maglite doesn’t. It can kill germs. Australian and Chinese researchers have built a device that uses a 12-volt battery to create a plasma that could kill one of the most persistent bacterial structures, biofilm. A biofilm is a bacterial group that encases its entire colony with a slimy material....

Media Platforms Design TeamForty-nine people were killed when Comair Flight 5191, a 50-seat commuter jet, crashed just outside Blue Grass Airport in Lexington, Ky. (Photo: AP/Wide World Photos)When Comair Flight 5191 took off from Blue Grass Airport in Lexington, Ky., it was flying low–low enough to clip a boundary fence and immediately crash. The reason was hard to accept: The pilot picked the wrong runway, one that was too short for commercial flights....